) integrated circuit manufactured by Sylvania The
Hygrade Sylvania Corporation was formed with the 1931 merger of the
Nilco Lamp Works, Inc.,
Sylvania Products Co. and
#Hygrade Lamp Company. Hygrade and Nilco manufactured incandescent lamps under license from General Electric, Hygrade (since 1928). The company had a total production capacity for 120,000 lamps and 100,000 tubes per day. Also in 1936 the
Economic Lamp Co. of
Malden, Massachusetts was acquired. This included a license agreement with General Electric and Hygrade's quota rose from 8.2242% to 9.124% of General Electric's domestic sales of standard (non-miniature) light bulbs. The Malden plant was disposed of some time before 1941. In 1939, Hygrade Sylvania started preliminary research on fluorescent technology, and later that year, demonstrated the first linear, or tubular,
fluorescent lamp. It was featured at the
1939 New York World's Fair. Sylvania acquired multiple fluorescent lamp related licenses from other companies, including for the production of chemicals and In April 1940 began mass production of fluorescent lamp fixtures, formerly handled in Salem, on 70,000sqft leased floor space in
Ipswich and within a year extended the lease by an additional 48,000sqft. The new fluorescent lamp plant in
Danvers was working overtime to meet the demand of factories now run on a 24-hour basis. In 1942 and 1943 the company made further financial transactions. Sylvania announced on August 2, 1943, the acquisition of its fifteenth manufacturing plant, a former motor sales and repair shop in
Warren, Pennsylvania which was converted to produce assembly parts for lamps and tubes. About 85% of Sylvania's production in 1943 was for the war effort and production was expanding further in 1944 amidst a leveling off throughout the industry in general. Since Sylvania was on a path to continue growing, some of the government owned plants were naturally taken over, which required more capital. These were the complete plants built at
Williamsport and
Brookville and additions to company plants (some old and some only opened during the war) at Ipswich,
Mill Hall,
Altoona,
Towanda,
Warren and Emporium. The government received approximately $3 million in exchange. In 1946, the Loring Avenue plant in Salem was converted to lamp production and its tube business moved to the Pennsylvania cluster. Sylvania raised $10 million with an October 1945 sale of its new $4 preferred stock and redeemed all of what was left of the 1942 15-year bonds. In August 1948 RCA became licensee for some 200 patents held by Sylvania, the agreement ran for 7 years at royalties of 0.75% but not exceeding $200,000 per year. Sylvania in 1948 began to greatly expand its capacity for
cathode ray tube production. The program was revised at the end of 1948, when the attained capacity of 500,000 CRTs per year was decided to be further tripled. Production began in the Emporium radio tube plant and in the latter part of 1948 new plants in
Ottawa, Ohio and
Seneca Falls, New York were bought. Sylvania entered the television field with its September 7, 1949, launch of
Sylvania Television branded devices (10-inch, 12.5-inch and 16-inch variants) sold at $199.95 - $449.95 and manufactured in the Colonial Radio Corp plant in
Buffalo. The
Sylvania Electric Products explosion, which involved scrap
thorium, occurred on July 2, 1956, at their facility in
Bayside, Queens,
New York City. The incident injured nine people; In 1959, Sylvania Electronics merged with
General Telephone to form General Telephone and Electronics (
GTE) in the
largest merger of the decade. Sylvania developed the earliest
flash cubes for still cameras, later selling the technology to
Eastman Kodak Company, and later a 10-flash unit called FlipFlash, as well as a line of household
electric light bulbs, which continued during GTE's ownership, later sold off to the German manufacturer
Osram, and is today marketed as
Osram Sylvania. In June 1964, Sylvania unveiled a color TV picture tube in which
europium-bearing phosphor was used for a much brighter, truer red than was possible before. Through merger and acquisitions, the company became a significant, but never dominating supplier of electrical distribution equipment, including transformers and switchgear, residential and commercial load centers and breakers, pushbuttons, indicator lights, and other hard-wired devices. All were manufactured and distributed under the brand name GTE Sylvania, with the name Challenger used for its light commercial and residential product lines. GTE Sylvania contributed to the technological advancement of electrical distribution products in the late 1970s with several interesting product features. At the time, they were the leading supplier of vacuum cast coil transformers, manufactured in their Hampton, Virginia plant. Their transformers featured aluminum primary windings and were cast using relatively inexpensive molds, allowing them to produce cast coil transformers in a variety of KVA capacities, primary and secondary voltages and physical coil sizes, including low profile coils for mining and other specialty applications. They also developed the first medium voltage 3 phase panel that could survive a dead short across two phases. Their patented design used bus bars encapsulated in a thin coating of epoxy and then bolted together across all three phases, using special non-conductive fittings. By 1981 GTE had made the decision to exit the electrical distribution equipment market and began selling off its product lines and manufacturing facilities. The Challenger line, mostly manufactured at the time in
Jackson, Mississippi, was sold to a former officer of GTE, who used the Challenger name as the name of his new company. Challenger flourished, and was eventually sold to
Westinghouse, and later
Eaton Corporation. By the mid-1980s, the GTE Sylvania electrical equipment product line and name was no more. In 1993 GTE exited the lighting business to concentrate on its core telecomms operations. The European, Asian and Latin American operations are now under the ownership of
Havells Sylvania. With the acquisition of the North American division by
Osram GmbH in January 1993
Osram Sylvania Inc. was established. == Polling ==